Two weeks ago the 1.1.4 "Go Fast" update went live for Destiny 2. That update includes a massive amount of changes that really does raise the gameplay of the beleaguered title. I've spent some time playing the game and taking the pulse of the community and can confidently claim that while it is not enough to fix all that ails Destiny 2, it is a start and a step in the right direction. A few months after release it had become apparent that Destiny 2 was in a bad state and the common refrain from the playing community had centered around a stale gameplay loop that sees your character much less powerful than in it's predecessor and endgame rewards that provide no real incentive to chase. The 1.1.4 update works somewhat to those ends, introducing unique nightfall rewards and removing some loot and strike repetition for the endgame side to pair with the increased movement, decreased super and special ability recharge rates, and some weapon tuning for the gameplay side. It's still only a step. Gunplay is still too slow in it's time to kills (a questions directly addressed, or for that matter, not really addressed but dodged, in the latest This Week at Bungie) and the PvP remains largely unchanged as a result. The rest of the endgame outside of nightfalls, where most players spend vastly longer amounts of time, remain in a content drought, and the unique loot doesn't address the major problem: once you get it to drop there is no reason to ever seek it again. There's way more details in the 1.1.4 update than it's worth dedicating space to here so the full release notes can be found on the Bungie site.
If you want to dip in and try out these changes, this would have been a perfect week to do so. Iron Banner was scheduled to kick off tomorrow with Control and it's 6v6, so basically a Destiny 1 feature that never should have left out is added to D2 and we can all get excited over the "new" content! But that's not happening this week. A "late breaking issue" has postponed Iron Banner for now and Rumble is returning it its place. Oh well... Truth is we're still a long way from Destiny 2 being worth picking up again. More work needs to be done on both the gameplay and content sides and there really isn't any chance that it's going to be in place before the 3rd DLC. So while the refrain from the announced roadmap changes months ago remains true: "Maybe this will be a good game again in the fall..."; at least we're on track in these early steps.
